


knowing

by Thalius



Category: Halo (Video Games) & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen, Halo 4 AU, Human Cortana (Halo), Oneshot, Wild West AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-13
Updated: 2019-07-05
Packaged: 2020-05-07 05:38:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19202986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thalius/pseuds/Thalius
Summary: It's a long road ahead, and they need somewhere to sleep for the night.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is the result of a lengthy discussion with [Jack](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JackalopingIntoTheVoid) about her idea of Halo 4 set in an open Western. I've also posted it on [tumblr](https://sledposting.tumblr.com/post/185509377292/knowing)!

She’d stopped shivering a long time ago, despite the setting sun, but what finally gave him pause was her hands slacking on his belt. 

He reached down and curled his hand over hers, tightening her fingers back under his belt. “Keep a grip,” he said over his shoulder. He couldn’t see her from this angle, but he could feel her cheek pressed against his back. His horse knickered at the sound of his voice—the first time he’d spoken in hours.

Cortana didn’t reply. Her hands didn’t move from his belt, but they didn’t loosen either. 

“We’ll find lodgings for the night,” he continued. It was still odd, adjusting back to so much silence, though the sound of his own voice to fill it was little comfort. “I can see a cabin up ahead.”

He rode another while yet, one hand still on hers, the other looped in his mare’s reins. Her weight against his back was a fierce, steady heat, and even as the sun set and the chill rose it became no less concerning. She hadn’t had a fever two days ago. 

John focused on the cabin growing larger on the horizon. It stood alone by the road, with nothing around it beyond a well and a smaller building he could only see the top of, most of it obscured behind the home. Further off, a barn smudged darkly against the sky, surrounded by a fenced enclosure. The enclosure was empty, the animals likely lodged for the night. 

It wasn’t much of a farmstead. He wondered how they got on. The nearest town was miles in the opposite direction.

“...’thing’s wrong,” Cortana murmured. Her fingers moved on his belt. 

“What is it?”

She didn’t speak again for several minutes. He waited for her to continue, still pushing his horse toward the house. He’d learned long ago to take heed of her warnings, no matter how vague or outlandish. 

Once they got close to the house, perhaps a hundred metres away, she spoke again. “John,” she whispered. “Stop.”

He unhooked her hands from his belt, then slid left, down to the ground on one leg, and slowly retracted the other from atop the saddle to keep from jostling her. She swayed forward without his weight, and he put out a hand to stop her from tumbling forward. 

“Cortana.” He grabbed her arm, and she lifted her head from beneath her hood. Her skin was frighteningly pale. “Tell me.”

“Don’t go in that house,” she said, and grabbed at his forearm, the one gripping her bicep. “Please.”

“Who’s in there?”

“Nobody,” she whispered. “Don’t… don’t go inside.”

“We need somewhere to sleep.” He paused, looking back towards the house. He couldn’t see any lanterns lit, but she’d said there was no one there. “Is it dangerous?”

She nodded. He set her upright in the saddle, then slid his rifle out from his pack. He thumbed off the safety and slung the strap over his shoulder. 

“Not—not that kind,” she said as she watched him. There was a weak note of humour in her voice. “There’s bodies in there. You’ll get sick.”

“I haven’t yet,” he replied immediately, not meeting her eyes. “I’m the only one.”

“There’s a first for everything.”

To appease her, he wrapped his handkerchief around his face and tied it off at the base of his skull. It was hard to gauge her expression from beneath her hood, but she clearly didn’t approve. 

“John….”

“I’ll only be in there a moment,” he replied. “If it’s bad, we sleep outside.” He double-checked to make sure his rifle was still loaded, then added. “And if I yell, take the horse and run.”

She let out a low  _ pfft  _ sound, but he crossed the road before she could argue. 

* * *

An “I told you so” was on the tip of her tongue as she waited, ready for whenever he reappeared from inside the house. She didn’t have his senses and couldn’t smell anything, but she knew of the rot behind the door. She knew the horses were dead in the barn, too, though she couldn’t be certain how long,

She remembered trying to explain to him once, the sensation of knowing. He’d nodded at her explanations patiently, but seemed largely unmoved by them. That was stock standard for most people, but John wasn’t most people, so his ambivalence had surprised her. Kurt had understood her, after all. That small quickening in your gut, a tingle at the back of your throat. Knowledge without context, but generally accurate by most measures. 

But she revelled in being able to surprise him, to move that stony face beyond its usual calm composure. The surprise had mostly faded by now, and even when he listened to her warnings it was usually only a pretext to go investigate anyway. But at least he was more prepared than he would be if he were alone.

_ He’s alone because of you. _

She kept a hold of that “I told you so”, focusing on that and nothing else. She could feel her lungs inside her chest, rustling with each breath. She could hear her heart beat beneath her eyes and ears and temples, a painful throb that reminded her she was still alive somehow. She could feel the heat burning all of it up. But she focused on her petty righteousness instead, because it was true and clear and simple. 

The sky was grey with early night when John finally re-emerged, and at once she decided to swallow the retort she’d been keeping ready for the past ten minutes. Nothing had changed in his demeanour, exactly. His gait was the same sure stride, his rifle now slung over his back. His expression was still its natural stone beneath the kerchief he’d tied over his nose. And there was no way she could see his eyes from this distance, but she knew that’s what had changed. 

He arrived at their horse and grabbed its reins, ripping his kerchief off and stuffing it in a pocket. John looked her over, a near-automated ritual he engaged in any time he left her for longer than several seconds, but he didn’t meet her eyes. “We’ll walk awhile more,” he told her, and pulled on the reins. The mare followed after him, huffing at having to move again. She gave its flank a weak pat.

“What did you see?”

“Empty house,” he replied. “As you said.”

Cortana slid further up the saddle and grabbed the horn, using it for balance. It was still warm from John, but the heat only made her shiver under her thick cloak. She didn’t ask him any further questions.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From a prompt fill on tumblr for: "I'll always be here for you."

He didn’t mind sleeping in the barn. He was one of the few people here that weren’t sick, and even if he were, it was doubtful that he’d fit in one of Dr. Tillson’s cots. That, and the barn was the only place where the air wasn’t thick with disease.

He washed from a bucket as best he could, cleaning the dust and hay off of himself. The water was a balm to his sunburnt skin, even if only for a few moments. He kept his shirt loose to keep it from clinging too much, but the rough fabric still caught on his blistered shoulders. Not that he had much choice in what he wore, now.

John emerged from the barn near dawn. The ground was still cold from the night, and the air made him shiver. He relished it as best he could, breathing in the cold wind, knowing what the conditions were inside Dr. Tillson’s practice.

When he opened the door to the medical building, a wave of immediate hot, rank air hit him so hard he wanted to spit to get the taste from his mouth and nose. Tillson has told him to cover his face whenever he came in, but that was more to prevent infection than to stave off the smell, and he’d already told her numerous times that wasn’t a problem. He ducked his head outside, sucked in another lungful of fresh air, and then entered the building.

The place was well suited to deal with poor circulation and the heat of daylight, with high vaulted ceilings and long thin windows that could be opened at dawn and in the evening—windows which also let in enough natural light that burning lanterns wasn’t necessary unless it was night. The layout and construction almost reminded him of a church. It was a testament, then, to how crowded her practice was, that the air was nearly unbreathable—or at least to him. It was one of the few instances he regretted his augmentations.

Inside was still dim, and a short pause in front of Tillson’s office, which doubled as her sleeping quarters, confirmed she was not yet awake. He continued down the hallway, into the main housing section where the sick were kept. The smell of fever and sweat and illness was strongest there, and over it he could smell that one of the patients were dead. He’d help Tillson remove them when she woke.

John wove his way through the sea of cots. He saw two nurses walking the lanes between the rows of beds, checking on people. They gave him a polite smile but let him be for now. He knew they had work for him. He’d speak with them afterwards.

He got to the end of the east-most row and knelt down beside Cortana’s low bed. They’d changed out her canister of water, and her sheets looked clean. She must have been up in the night, then. It bothered him to think of her awake in the dark, surrounded by disease.

But she was asleep now. He pressed the back of his hand to her forehead. It was difficult to tell what heat came from her sunburn and what heat came from fever. He thought she felt a little cooler than yesterday, but he couldn’t be certain.

John sat by her bed for a while, waiting. He should be helping the nurses. He wanted to help. But he needed to speak with her, to make sure she was alright.

It wasn’t long enough of a wait that the dawn turned to daylight, but he tracked the shadows that swept slow across the ground. A beam of sunlight was about to reach his foot when he finally heard her move—and not the restless resettling of someone sleeping with a fever, the movement was purposeful and deliberate. When he looked away from the beam and up to her pillow, blue eyes stared back at him.

“You’re here,” she rasped, her voice so dry it barely pushed past her lips.

“How are you feeling?”

“Oh,” she replied, a hint of humour creeping into her croaking voice. “You know.”

He pulled her canteen down and helped her sit up to drink from it. Her shirt was damp with sweat, and he watched how rubbery and slow her movements were. The tremours and the weakness had been easy to ignore when they’d been on the road, a problem he’d deal with later when they weren’t slowly cooking to death in the open plains of New Sydney.

“I would kill a man for cold water,” she said when she pushed the canteen away. “This tastes like warm dirt.”

“I can refresh it,” he offered. “The well’s usually cold.”

“When I’m done this. Already polluted it with my germs anyway.” She settled back down on the cot and let out a cough. “Are you—” Another cough. “—okay?”

He smiled faintly. “I’m fine. Tillson gave me aloe for the burns.”

She nodded, her eyes looking him over. “You’re all red still. How long was I…?”

“Two days. You needed the rest,” he added, seeing her face twist in concern. “It was a hard walk here.”

She nodded, her hair rustling on the pillow. Cortana grabbed for the blanket and helped her settle it around her shoulders. She shivered again.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, nestling deeper into her blanket. “About your horse.”

“It’s alright.”

“It’s not,” she replied, and gave him a sad smile. “But I appreciate your optimism. We’ll have to—we’ll have to go back to the Capital, get you a fresh one. Doubt you’d find a Clydesdale this far out.”

“After you’ve recovered.” He watched the nurses hover near them. They were still helping other patients, but he could see them glancing over to Cortana’s cot. His visit was nearing its conclusion, then. “After all this is over.”

“It will be,” she said, and a tiny hand crept out from under the blankets. Five fingers, blistered from sun and callused from their journey, extended in offer. They looked fragile, and he grabbed them to cover her hand with his own. To hide it. “And I’ll be there ‘til the end of it.”

“Of course,” he said quickly, but he couldn’t quite meet her eyes.


End file.
